“It’s really all because of Madonna,” says James D’Arcy. “She cast me when nobody else really wanted to.” The movie the shaggy haired British actor is talking about is W.E., in which he played Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor. And he seems to be right. Since then he’s appeared in Cloud Atlas and, most recently, playing Anthony Perkins in Hitchcock, which opens in select cities this Friday.

And as for Madge, the two are good friends which seems to shock a lot of people.

“I’m good friends with most of the directors I work with,” he explained to Celebuzz. “People are only amazed because it’s Madonna, like because she’s Madonna she doesn’t have friends which is ridiculous if you start to think about it.”

D’Arcy caught Madonna’s latest show in London and is actually featured quite prominently in the concert.

“On the screens she plays four minutes of outtakes from the movie of me and Andrea rolling around on the beach while she sings ‘Masterpiece,’ her song from the film,” he says. “After the show I went to a party at her house.”

The 37-year-old actor gives a brilliant performance as Perkins in ‘Hitchcock,’ which explores the relationship between Alfred Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) and his influential wife Alma Reville (Helen Mirren) during the making of his 1960 horror masterpiece Psycho.

He prepared by watching interviews of Perkins done around that time.

“Perkins did share several characteristics with Norman Bates (his Psycho character). They were both shy and had a boyish quality. I don’t want to sound disrespectful but looking at a few of his other films from that time, he wasn’t the most wildly versatile actor around. He had the same mannerisms. The studios were trying to mold him into the next James Dean or Marlon Brando, which seems absurd now when you think about it.

“It’s interesting that he’s so confused with Norman Bates. He became so synonymous with the role that he was condemned by it. He had so little freedom in that people didn’t know Perkins very well. People know Norman Bates very well maybe, not Anthony Perkins.” Although he adds, “Who’s to say what his career would have been like without Psycho?” (Indeed, Perkins went onto to play Bates another three times in three sequels to Hitchcock’s film).

D’Arcy clearly had a wonderful time working with icons like Hopkins and Mirren.

“It was a wonderful set and it all starts from the top,” he explains. “If the leading man doesn’t f..k around then no one else will. [Hopkins] is the nicest, kindest most professional man. It was just a lovely set. I mean look at the cast involved. It wasn’t an expensive movie to make. Everyone really wanted to do it.”

And which is his favorite Hitchcock movie?

“I feel like the answer is always the last one I watched,” he said. “For instance, I just saw Foreign Correspondent, a 1940 propaganda film and it was utterly mesmerizing.”